What’s This Road About?

What’s this road about

Girl in carriage asks her dad.

He answers: Walking

They were headed to the beach, father pushing the three-year old in the carriage braced with buckets, shovels, and a bag for snacks.

His long legs and fast pace meant that it wasn’t long before they came up behind me, passed with a smile and a wave, then disappeared into the distance.

I saw them there, carriage abandoned where the sand begins, father and child mounding sand into a preposterous castle with moats and stick fences, voices of the king and the soldiers, cows mooing and ducks quacking. The beach was for playing.

Home, I sit at the desk where I write, stare out the window (desk not yet shoved into the corner as Mark Twain and so many, many others have done). This time, this place are for writing. I write the roiling, rumpled mounds of story that are that day’s trying a different way and when I am away from that desk for some time, new ideas sprout through the cracks and wave their little idea arms and this time away from the desk is writing, too.